(An album cover symbolizing the hands of the great Chilean musician Victor Jara - just one of the thousands of Chileans brutally tortured and murdered by the regime of Augusto Pinochet. Jara's hands were intentionally and symbolically smashed by Pinochet's henchmen immediately prior to his brutal murder in 1973. )
Whoever said that irony was dead?
Today is Human Rights Day. The 58th anniversary of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And on this year's Human Rights Day - the cruel dictator who stole human rights from the Chilean people was finally read his last "rites"
That's a cause for celebration. Shame it took so long to come.
He should have had his Last Rites 33 years ago. Immediately after he denied so many thousands of Chileans THEIR Last Rites - and before the 17 years that he denied MILLIONS of Chileans their HUMAN Rights.
He was an evil despot.
His death reminds me of the crimes against humanity committed by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in their clandestine support of the overthrow of the democratically-elected government of Chile in 1973.
I remember the death of President Salvador Allende.
I remember the death of the folk hero Victor Jara (the Chilean equivalent of Bob Dylan).
(Victor Jara was tortured and his hands - that played the guitar so eloquently for the people - were intentionally smashed by Pinochet's henchmen as a symbolic crushing of his spirit and musical gifts. And then he was murdered in cold blood. Oh how they feared and hated the power of his music...)
I remember the death of thousands of innocent Chileans. Innocent of any crime but believing that they were entitled to their democratically-elected government - regardless of the opinions of Richard Milhous Nixon and his literal partner-in-crime Henry Kissinger.
As Tom Lehrer put it:
For might makes right
Until they see the light
Got to be protected
All their rights respected
Till somebody we LIKE
Can be elected...
It also reminds me of the comfort and succor provided to Pinochet by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
So today I celebrate the death of the Dictator Who Stole Human Rights From Chile...
May he rot in his grave...
I have no charity in my heart for this evil man.
Ultimately he failed though. And he failed because eventually the spirit of the people will always rise above scum like Pinochet - and their cynical supporters like Nixon, Kissinger, Reagan and Thatcher.
The British musician Billy Bragg summed up that indomitable human spirit in his tribute song to the late Phil Ochs:
They smeared you with their lies.
Says he: "But they could never kill
What they could not compromise.
i never compromised..."
That's a good lesson for us to take away on this Human Rights Day.
Viva La Revolucion!